Bolsonaro and Liberal Party call for partial invalidation of Brazilian election results

Jair Bolsonaro has asked to invalidate the results of the Brazilian elections of October 30 in which Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won by a very small margin of votes. Both the incumbant president and the Liberal Party (PL) filed a lawsuit before Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE) requesting the annulment of the results of the oldest electronic ballot boxes because "they are impossible to audit."

For his part, the president of the TSE, Alexandre de Moraes, said that they will conduct an investigation if the PL can also present doubts about the voting in the first round, held four weeks earlier.

These old ballot boxes represent 61% of the total used in the elections and were manufactured between 2009 and 2015. According to a private audit conducted by the PL, in the modern ballot box - in 2020 - Bolsonaro obtained the majority of votes (51.05%) in the second round.

In his technical report, the PL's lawyer, Marcelo Bessa, asked the judicial authorities to "verify the possible malfunction" of the old ballot boxes.

Lula da Silva won the closest election in Brazil's history, with 50.9% of the vote to Bolsonaro's 49.1%. With his victory, da Silva returns to power 12 years after his first term. The new Brazilian president previously spent almost 600 days in prison for corruption offenses.